What’s your biggest anxiety dream?

In the dream, I have maybe nine tables, and none of them even have water yet. I realize on my way to the kitchen to check on the status of table seven’s food that somehow I never even put in the order. People are starting to wave their hands at me irately, and whenever I try and go over to see them, the restaurant gets longer and somehow I can’t run. I’m pretty sure the owner is part of the large party at table five, but I can’t even find their ticket, I’m gonna get hell for that. I spill a tray of drinks at the bar and the bartender starts yelling. I’m sweating buckets. I’m constantly in motion, but nothing is getting done, and each moment I realize I’ve forgotten something else.

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Let me guess. You don’t know the combination either …

Okay, so I haven’t been a waitress for more than 10 years, but every so often I still have a nightmare about restaurant work. I can honestly say it’s the only job that shows up in my anxiety dreams. It has become part of my vocabulary of stress, like high school. And incidentally, I have dreams about those golden years too, very standard ones where I can’t find my locker or my classes and sometimes I’m not wearing any pants.

I’m sure all of you have anxiety dreams, unless you are the kind of self-empowered person who somehow takes charge even in your sleep and find a spare pair of jeans in your locker because you still remember the combination, and you just say heartily, “Phew! That was a close call. Thank god I’m so capable.” If so, you should just go far, far away. The rest of us are still cowed by the thought of trying to run or punch but finding that somehow your legs and arms don’t work any more. (I also love how all this seems totally normal in dreams, so even while I’m panicking I might also be carrying a rooster and turn into my dad at odd intervals, none of which fazes me at all.)

I’m a pretty thick person when it comes to my inner life, so I am usually blessed with pretty literal anxiety dreams. It’s like my psyche knows not to throw in too many archetypes and too much symbolism, because once we get to the bearded guy and the forest and the dancing rabbit I’ll just get annoyed and probably wake up before the crucial message is delivered. So I have dreams like: I’m looking everywhere for my child and can’t find her. That’s basically just me freaking out about losing someone so precious to me (the worst thing that could happen) and probably also worrying that I’m a crappy mother, the kind who doesn’t make very good dinners and would blog about her first sex talk with her kid. Or the most common theme: Someone I love is acting like an a-hole to me and I don’t know what to do. I think this has the very deep meaning that I lack trust in other people and have an overall fear that people I love might turn out to be a-holes. Someone once told me that every person in your dreams is actually just an aspect of yourself. I doubt this, because I already know I’m an a-hole, I don’t need a dream to deliver that bit of information.

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David Beckham’s anxiety dream: being caught in a crowded room WITH pants on.

I still remember the fear dreams I had as a kid, like the recurring one where I was being chased through the house by the people with the glowing red eyes, and when I finally got to my parents room to wake them up, they opened their eyes and of course they had glowing red eyes too. Oooooh, heebie jeebies. And there was the one where I was falling off a cliff and I yelled to my mom and dad to save me but they just kept walking on by. In short, I worried my parents were a-holes first, and then just continued the theme into adulthood with new characters. God, I’m so unoriginal. This is why I can only blog and I’ll never write a book — not that I want to, but it is the only thing that will convince certain members of my extended family that I am an actual writer. Maybe I’ll have an anxiety dream soon where I try and write a book but my computer keeps crashing and even the people who used to like my blog posts are bored silly by me. Oh god, now I’ll never sleep again.

So what anxiety dreams haunt your sleeping hours?

KELLY MILLS is a freelance writer, personal trainer, and co-owner of

Phoenix Gym in Berkeley. She saves her favorite swear words for her own